Read Mr Wilson's address to the Cultural Prizegiving.

Good evening and welcome to the 2017 cultural prizegiving. Tonight we celebrate another magnificent year of success in the performing arts. And what a year it has been, with all areas of the performing arts continuing to grow and flourish under the leadership and supervision of a very talented group of staff and, of course, students.

2017 for the performing arts started (literally) with a bang – with our senior drama production – Great Expectations, wooing audiences with its themes of wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil.

I am sure that everyone who attended the school musical “Bye Bye Birdie” would agree with the reviewers that this was one of the highlights of the school year. A dazzling amount of talent was on display and a huge congratulations must once again go out to everyone involved in this production. For the first time the Theatre Royal was used this year as the production venue. This was a fabulous opportunity for our students to experience a true professional theatre and dates have already been tentatively booked for an encore in 2018.

In only our second year entering the competition, all of our choirs were very successful at the Big Sing competition. Sotto Voce, Augmented and our new mixed Choir – the NayCol Chorale all won awards in this prestigious National Competition.

The Gala Concert, also at the Theatre Royal, was once again a resounding success, with the audience commenting on the noticeable improvements of all performances from last year. The cancellation of StageChallenge was disappointing.   However, through the tenacity of year 13 student Alana James and drama teacher Anton Bentley in particular - the students were still able to perform to a very high standard at the aptly named ‘Break Out’ festival.

The Nayland Music Trust continues to grow and now boasts close to 100 students learning orchestral instruments, predominantly at Broadgreen Intermediate, Nayland Primary School, Birchwood School, Stoke School and Enner Glyn School. The Music Trust is set to grow exponentially over the coming years and will ultimately ensure that young people within the Stoke region get affordable access to quality music education from a young age.

Other highlights included the visit from jazz guru Roger Fox, the Shakespeare Festival had much higher participation and achievement than in previous years, the concert band continues to grow from strength to strength, the Vast Dance festival was once again a great evening of entertainment and our bands performed exceptionally well in the Rockquest competition.

The scary thing is that the performances I have highlighted tonight only touch the surface of what has been an incredibly busy year.

Obviously to get the best out of these amazing students we need amazing staff. I would like to thank teachers Nigel Weeks, Anton Bentley, Jodie Freeman and Stacey Gundry for all of your dedication, resilience and expertise this year to ensure that our students get the best performing arts education possible. Of course, this could not be achieved without help from a huge number of people behind the scenes, in particular Sarah Luton, our Arts Coordinator, Chris Lukies and a dedicated team of itinerant teachers working with a large number of students each week, assisting them to be better musicians and prepared for their performance exams.

2018 looks to be even more exciting for the performing arts. We welcome two new members to the team, firstly Anna Willows, joining us from Riccarton High School as teacher in charge of Dance and Beth Cuizon from Birkenhead College, who will join Nigel as a music teacher as Jodie Freeman will be on maternity leave.

Once again, congratulations to all our prizewinners and to all students who have been involved in performances throughout the year.